David Hancock, healthcare executive advisor, InterSystems, explains what’s needed to overcome a lack of interoperability, and outlines the path needed to achieve a seamless and integrated healthcare ecosystem.
NHS chiefs and government ministers alike are currently grappling with how best to cope with the huge backlog of patients created by the Coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdowns. Pent-up demand, together with fewer doctors making referrals in the last year means millions are now thought to be awaiting hospital treatment. Add to this an ageing UK population with a whole host of different care requirements and it becomes clear that our healthcare system must urgently find ways to work smarter if it is to meet this considerable challenge head on.
Reimagining the way we organise patient care
The good news is that over the course of 2020, both innovation and digitisation have accelerated across our healthcare system. We have seen this demonstrated through the rise in technologies like telemedicine and electronic patient records, for example. However, as we move out of the acute phase of the pandemic, there are now other methods we can employ to reduce the growing pressure on our hospitals and lessen wait times for patients caught in the backlog.
One might be grouping high volume procedures such as hip replacements together in procedure-specific hubs across the country, in order to carry them out more efficiently. Another is treating less people in hospital and more out in the community, including the increased use of remote monitoring, home visits and virtual consultations, especially for those managing chronic conditions. However, for efficiencies like this to work, affiliated healthcare professionals from different organisations need to be able to access the right information to care for those patients.
The problem right now is that these organisations are often using a whole host of different technology systems that don’t integrate easily with each other. This makes it harder to share important information, such as patient records and medical history across healthcare teams, with primary care data proving particularly difficult to access. While, some NHS Trusts, such as Lincolnshire, are successfully trialling a transition to centralised Care Plans that are accessible, editable and publishable by multiple partner organisations, many Trusts are still struggling with this. A big thing standing in the way of greater adoption is the lack of universally open standards when it comes to technology systems.
The importance of universally open standards
If we want more than one team to be able to treat patients in a joined-up way, everyone needs access to the same up to date information about those patients. This means bringing together diverse and complex healthcare systems, some of which might be digitised and others still paper-based, all operating on different standards. By putting in place a fully interoperable integration engine, you can create a bridge between different systems so they can effectively talk to each other. In the real world, it means that anyone involved in supporting a patient has the ability to contribute to and view up to date information about them – they can work efficiently and effectively and reach out to other providers if necessary.
Embracing modern interoperability standards is already significantly improving the experience of healthcare professionals and patients. Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust, for example, has linked up with 19 Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments across the county. Their records integrating with hospital records automatically helps to save them crucial minutes in the handover process, easing pressure on A&E departments, and improving patient safety. With systems connected, trusts eliminate the manual processes typically carried out by busy A&E staff. Ambulance crews now simply confirm their patient’s name and at the click of a button staff can instantly access all the necessary information from the ambulance record.
The way ahead
Although digital transformation in healthcare has accelerated enormously over the course of the pandemic, adopting universally open standards remains a sticking point in allowing us to truly embrace more collaborative ways of working. In order to continue the pace of change and ensure that the digital innovations that have proved so useful in the last year can be adopted long-term, we need information to flow freely and securely around an integrated healthcare system. This not only makes things easier and faster for the patients but for healthcare providers and ancillary services too. At a time where speed of care is of the essence, but without compromising on safety in any way, an emphasis on universal standards will open up a whole host of new opportunities for fast-tracking healthcare services.
